


Nightwalker

by zeroism



Series: KH:E bits and pieces [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, I mean seriously I wrote this exclusively for me and 3 other people, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Self-Indulgent, it's part of a 10 year old fanfic that never got written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 15:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeroism/pseuds/zeroism
Summary: The golden lights squint a little at him, an unseen mouth opening to hiss with a warped, inhuman voice. "Iwassleeping until you started thrashing around like a Dusk."Roxas lets out a sound that is equal parts anger and confusion as he succeeds at detangling himself from what he now knows are limbs. "Inmybed?"Roxas talks to his Heart after their Whole has a nightmare, and has a couple of realizations.





	Nightwalker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trinity Trio](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Trinity+Trio).



> SO THIS SETTING WILL GENUINELY MAKE NO SENSE TO ANYONE NOT IN MY OLD FRIENDS CIRCLE SO HERE'S A QUICK PRIMER  
> \- Only KH1-CoM-KH2 are canon for this AU  
> \- That means nothing from BBS onwards. Absolutely none of it. Specially not Master Xehanort. Nor Ventus or Terranort. Only Lingering Will remains.  
> \- Some of DDD's events may have happened but in a very different way, neither Riku nor Sora are Masters, no Xehanort meddling, and most importantly Riku didn't get a haircut. Riku also does not appear in this fic so this is meaningless  
> \- The main thing here is that Sora, Anti-Sora and Roxas exist independently of each other due to Reasons, and are separated from the rest of the team for Other Reasons
> 
> If you'd like more in-depth background, you may read **[this relationship chart/plot summary](https://i.imgur.com/T6brZOd.png)** by the AU's co-author, [Rey](https://twitter.com/vvaniitas) :3

Roxas woke from a dreamless sleep, body overheating with an abnormal warmth.

His sleep-addled mind provides that he'd probably gotten tangled on the sheets, and he weakly tries to bat the bundle of fabric around his neck away, achieving nothing but a soft grunt coming from it. Roxas groans back, still not awake enough to deal with clingy blankets cursing at him and telling him to go to sleep.

Wait a second.

"What the—" Roxas manages to flip himself around, finding his eyes met with blindingly bright yellow orbs. "What... are you  _ doing _ ?"

The golden lights squint a little at him, an unseen mouth opening to hiss with a warped, inhuman voice. "I  _ was _ sleeping until you started thrashing around like a Dusk."

Roxas lets out a sound that is equal parts anger and confusion as he succeeds at detangling himself from what he now knows are limbs, still sluggish, voice rough with sleep. "In  _ my _ bed?"

If not for his lack of human eyes in this form, Roxas could swear he saw the Heartless roll his eyes at him. "Where the hell else?"

"Um,  _ anywhere _ else?" Roxas' voice is at least a few pitches higher than normal at this point, sitting up with a huff. "I don't know, with Sora? Or on the floor?"

The Heartless only stares at him with expressionless, wide open eyes, not moving from his position. "I'm not a dog, I'm not gonna sleep on the floor!"

"Then— go sleep with Sora!?" Roxas flails his arms, almost smacking his hand on the other boy's face. "How am I even an  _ option _ ?" Sora never bats a single eyelash at being used as a pillow, after all. His arms were always open for all sorts of cuddling. And his Heartless would always take what was offered. Something must have happened — there's no other explanation.

This time, Anti-Sora does react, in a somewhat unpredictable way. "I— can't," he mumbles, shoving his face into Roxas' pillow. "His emotions are messing with me, so I can't."

"Oh," Roxas supplies helpfully. There's an awkward pause, Anti unwilling to elaborate, Roxas grappling with words. "Is he... okay?"

"No," is the almost immediate reply.

Roxas grimaces. Sora was always okay, or at least pretending to be. He was the one who kept their weird little team stable. Without that... "Shouldn't we... you know, help?"

Anti shakes his head against the pillow, sending a clear message. "He had a bad dream, I think. The only one he wants, who could help with that..."

Roxas lets the words linger, nodding after a moment, eyes unfocused. As much as his feelings (or whatever mockery of them he has) over Sora were still conflicted... he knew what it was like to be forcefully removed from one's friends. To lose the strength he relied on. Being around the pieces of himself he lost, reminded of what went wrong, wouldn't help fill the emptiness in Sora's chest.

"I could feel it — how much he misses them," Anti's voice warbled unnaturally, echoing in the shadows of the room, as if Roxas needed a reminder of how surreal their situation was. "It was making us both angry so I left."

Roxas scoffs loudly, surprising both himself and Anti, who finally lifts his head to look at his Nobody with skeptic eyes. After recovering from his shock, he answers the unspoken question; "No, no, it's just... Someone once told me I should share my anger with Sora," he smirks bitterly. "Now anger is the last thing he needs and it's all either of us can give him."

When Roxas finally looks back at Anti, his eyes meet golden yellow ones, still glowing, but human, on a face that looks so much like Sora he could nearly be fooled. The black-haired boy blinks, eyebrows a little furrowed. "You have a lot more to offer than anger."

"That's just your Sora talking," Roxas responds mirthlessly. Their more real counterpart did always seem to think so highly of Roxas, for reasons beyond his understanding.

"No, it's— arrrgh," Anti rubs at his hair angrily, his antenna-like tufts of hair getting even more twisted, "Look, you— you're from the realm of light, you were born here, you thrive here... None of that is true for me."

Roxas was too confused to be offended at the statement, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. "Thrive?  _ Thrive _ ? Did you— miss the part where I'm a Nobody?" Not that he could have, but nothing Anti said added up, so he elaborated, "You know, one of the non-existent ones? A creature that was never meant to exist?"

"N-No!" At least, Anti had the good sense to look embarrassed, hands wringing at the hem of his shirt. "I mean, you weren't supposed to exist but — you did! You had friends, and a name, and you got to taste ice cream, and it took a while, but people remembered you! You— exist!"

Roxas blinked at him, unnatural warmth returning to his chest.

That was the most weirdly validating thing he'd heard since leaving the Organization.

His Heartless couldn't have noticed the effect his words had, though, growing steadily more agitated the more he spoke. "Me, I was just — a weird sensation, a deja vu, loss of control... a mistake." This was a familiar line of thought, Roxas recognized, and not a good one. "Knowing he'd been a Heartless... Was nowhere near the tip of Sora's tongue. He barely even remembered being one, much less... that he was _ still one _ . Still becoming one. That We were still inside him and fighting alongside him—!"

Trying to defuse the rapidly escalating situation, Roxas quickly chose to ignore his actual words, and focus on the effect they were having on Anti; "Hey— hey! Calm down, you're getting all shadowy and angry again, that's not going to help!"

Needless to say, that did not help either, Anti steadily becoming covered in shadows again, his eyes the only recognizable feature left. "I may as well have never even existed in the first place and — and maybe if I hadn't, if Sora  _ knew _ , he wouldn't have... He wouldn't have failed so  _ thoroughly _ —"

Now that train of thought had to be stopped as soon as possible, lest it go off the rails and crash against the wall, he realized with a touch of desperation. "Whoa, whoa, now hang on a minute, you honestly think you're responsible for him almost falling to darkness? Because that—"

"If not me, then who else!?" A rush of darkness pulsed from him, passing right through Roxas and leaving him feeling cold and  _ terrified _ . There was a moment of silence, Anti thankfully not escalating any further, his aggressive stance slowly curling into itself. "It was the darkness in his heart that allowed it to happen, and guess what I am! Not a person, I'm his negativity, I'm his  _ rage _ , I'm the very embodiment of Sora's darkness! If he had any idea I existed, he could have..."

Roxas set his jaw— he couldn't argue against  _ all  _ of that. The boy in front of him was, indeed, all the anger, hurt, and sadness that Sora kept hidden deep inside himself. He was Sora's heart, the rawest form of his emotions.

Sora's emotions.

The feedback loop of negativity wasn't helping either the Heartless in front of him, or the leftover boy who's certainly lying awake in the bedroom across from this.

Roxas didn't know a whole lot about feelings, but he had to do  _ something _ .

"Listen... You know he couldn't have known. And even if he did..." He stayed quiet for a beat, gauging Anti's reaction, or lack of one. The Heartless remained silent, fists balled on his lap, but the waves of pain were no longer emanating from him. That was... good, right? "You're his heart. You _ know _ he wouldn't have done anything to hurt you if he knew you were there. He wouldn't want to get rid of you, it wouldn't have changed a thing."

There was no response. Roxas hoped it was because Anti knew he was right.

He sighed, offering Anti an awkward smile. "If you feel responsible, then... this is your chance to make it up to him, don't you think?"

That seemed to garner some reaction — the shadows didn't leave completely, but enough that Roxas could tell Anti was making puppy dog eyes. Probably didn't even realize he was doing it too, the bastard. "A being of darkness like me... couldn't really help anyone... Much less someone as bright as Sora."

"'Course you can. Those times you surfaced... You could have done anything, but you chose to fight for Sora." Anti jolted, as if frightened by something. Roxas had to fight the urge to laugh; the Heartless was way easier to read that humans ever had been to him. "Am I wrong?"

"It— it wasn't a conscious choice!" Anti sputters, and Roxas thinks he can see a pout in the vague shapes of his face. "Fighting and mauling things... that's just... what I do, it's an instinct, not like I knew what I was doing beyond just, punching stuff in the face..."

Roxas knows that's not all there is to it— part of him had been with Sora at those times. Sure, he wasn't privy to the thoughts going through the Heartless' heart, if  _ any _ , but he was certain the Shadow-given-form had at least been trying to  _ survive _ . "Doesn't change the fact that you helped. You protected Sora when he was on the brink. I'm sure he appreciates that."

"It... argh, stop doing that!" Anti huffed, elaborating when Roxas tilts his head in silent question, "Making me think!"

Roxas manages to chuckle, "Wow, you really are the raw, mindless side of Sora, huh?"

That earns him a punch to the shoulder, but there's no real strength behind it. Thankfully, because a full-force Anti strike can really do some damage, if the Nobodies he'd talked to were any indication.

"Just... believe me, okay?" Roxas shrugs, as if he weren't attempting to give a pep talk. "Sora wouldn't want you to think that way about yourself."

He could forgive anyone for falling into darkness... anyone but himself. Is that how Sora really feels...?

"...Yeah, whatever," Anti shrugs back at him, but he's almost back to humanoid form, so Roxas assumes he's just playing difficult. "I'm gonna go sleep on the corridor."

In the same movement as he gets up, he's swung right back down as Roxas pulls him by the collar of his shirt, calling out, "Oh no, you don't. Just because he doesn't want company right now doesn't mean Sora would want that, either."

The momentum causes Anti to flop back down bonelessly into bed, glaring up at Roxas, crying out, "Wh— you were the one kicking me out! Like ten seconds ago!"

Roxas just lies back down next to him, shrugging and closing his eyes. "I'm un-kicking you out. Now go to sleep so Sora can rest too."

Anti blinks next to him, Roxas can tell by the momentary dimming of the bright golden light next to his face. There's a quiet minute, and Roxas thinks he might just have managed to get Anti to shut up, when his voice cuts through the silence again, quiet and ethereal, almost like an echo. "What... What if w—" He shakes his head violently, almost startling the Nobody next to him. "What if... Sora has a nightmare again?"

Oh.

So  _ that's  _ what this was all about to begin with.

Roxas has to stop himself from laughing again, but he's shocked to realize it's less of a mocking laugh and more of a fond one. He's not entirely sure what to make of that.

So on impulse, he takes his hand to the top of Anti's head, forcefully messing up his hair. "If he does, I'm— we're right here to help him out, right?"

The Heartless looks up to him, affronted by the gesture, a childish pout on his face. "I  _ guess _ ." There's a moment of silence, Anti clearly thinking about something, before he speaks up again. "You won't... like... absorb me or anything when I sleep, right?"

He nearly recoils. "Uh,  _ no _ , I would hope not!"

The truth is that he doesn't know he will not. He  _ is _ a Nobody. His ultimate goal should be to reunite this empty shell of a body with his heart. It's not like he had never felt that abnormal _ pull _ calling him to Anti, but— 

"What would even  _ happen  _ if you did?" Anti muses, voice carefully neutral. "Would I disappear? Or would you? Or—"

"Wow, I do  _ not _ want to think about this at two in the morning." And he doesn't want to, but he thinks, because while he and Anti may have come from Sora, they are such vastly different people, and if the three of them, _ four _ of them, were to recombine... "L-Let's just... go to sleep, Anti.  _ Please _ ."

He'd already given himself up once. He's not sure he'd be able to do it again.

Thankfully, the Heartless does not speak up again, the silence a welcoming embrace, lulling sleep back into Roxas and Anti and Sora in the other room. He's almost dozing off when he feels those too-warm arms wrap around his torso again, a head of spiky but oddly soft hair pushing against his chest. Roxas breathes in deeply, letting Anti nestle against him, listening to the sounds of fabric and wind.

Truly, he does not want to merge back into Sora, or into Anti, or— whoever. Right now, they're all their own people, and Roxas realizes Anti deserves to be his own person, too.

Neither of them have heartbeats, he muses, as the darkness takes his mind to the realm of sleep.


End file.
